To transport the day's takings, consisting of banknotes and the like, from shops to the night safe of a bank, it is a known practice to use simple leather bags or plastic tubes ("cartridges"). Both cartridges and night safes are very unsatisfactorily designed from the point of view of security, and a criminal today has many opportunities of obtaining the valuable contents in a variety of ways. Bank messengers are frequently attacked, as the cartridges are all too easily rifled of their contents, and the safes can be either blasted open or pulled out of the wall. Similarly a vehicle, may be broken open and emptied. Moreover, attacks on bank messengers and night-safe robberies have recently shown a marked tendency to increase, and the police, the Swedish Bank Inspection Board, and other institutions are desperately seeking for ways of overcoming the security problems. To this end, efforts are being made to improve existing arrangements, efforts which are mainly concentrated on strengthening the night safes in various ways. Experiments have also been made with systems whereby the valuables are dyed if the night safe is subjected to violence. Hitherto it has not been possible to make cartridges of such secure construction that they lose their attraction as objects of theft.
As a result of all the difficulties in the way of protecting valuables, the Swedish Bank Inspection Board is seriously considering measures which would involve restrictions on the services offered by banks, and which would naturally be to the disadvantage of the public.